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At the Oct. 20, workshop, the Federalsburg Mayor and Council continued their discussion about developing and providing meeting minutes.
Councilperson Brandi James stated that she understood that Town Attorney Lyndsey Ryan had advised that written minutes were no longer necessary as the business of the town and decisions are memorialized through video recordings. The town utilizes a cloud-based service, Town Hall Streams, to stream the meetings and archive the video recordings. The service provides an option of transcribing the video recordings into written minutes using Artificial Intelligence (AI). However, the accuracy of the transcription has been called into question, particularly in identifying speakers.
Jennifer Dindinger, an Associate with the town’s contracted law firm, Booth, Cropper & Marriner, PC, noted that the Mayor and Council must approve the minutes and make them available to the public. She is going to confirm what “available” means in terms of the State of Maryland Public Information Act. Once the Mayor and Council have that information, they will determine whether to print minutes for public availability or provide the memorialization of the meeting through the archive video recordings.
The Mayor and Council continue to work on inputs for budget modification, particularly water and sewer costs and fees, and staff compensation.
The figures for an increase for water and sewer rates will be presented at the Nov. 3 public hearing.
Regarding staff compensation, Councilperson Debi Sewell stated that based on conversations with former town manager consultant Ken Decker, four of the public work employees are anticipating raises. Any increase in salaries will need to be determined as part of the budget modifications.
Mayor Abner quickly reported at the “audit” had begun but did not specify whether it was the FY2024 or FY2025 audit. She also noted that the Wawa project is moving along, with appropriate approvals being sought through the County.
